The Theresa Rebeck play "Dead Accounts," directed by longtime Old Globe Theatre artistic director Jack O'Brien, officially opened on Broadway last night. And while critics didn't exactly give the production its last rites, the reception was decidedly mixed.

This is the play, by the way, that stars Katie Holmes of Hollywood and splitting-with-Tom-Cruise fame. "Dead Accounts" is her second Broadway show. Also in the cast: Norbert Leo Butz, who won a Tony Award in 2005 for his role in the Old Globe-launched "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" (likewise directed by O'Brien.)

Rebeck is a veteran playwright (and onetime Pulitzer Prize finalist) who also helped create the current, Broadway-centric TV series "Smash."

There were a couple of common themes in the reviews: That "Dead Accounts" felt unfocused, and that what story was there seemed a little thin. Most critics were enthusiastic about Butz's jittery performance, though, and thought Holmes acquitted herself pretty well, too.

"This comedy about a prodigal son, returned from the wilds of New York City to his family in Cincinnati, seems to float out of memory even as you’re watching it," said Ben Brantley in The New York Times. O'Brien directs the piece with "an assortment of amiable diversionary tactics," Brantley writes, adding that Holmes appears much more at ease here than in her Broadway debut (in Arthur Miller's "All My Sons") four years ago.

Despite its shortcomings, Brantley says, "(f)or at least its first 15 minutes 'Dead Accounts' does manage to command your attention. That’s because its first scene is essentially a sustained aria of nervous energy for (Butz)."

Joe Dziemianowicz of the New York Daily News gave the production two out of five stars, lamenting that "Holmes’ efforts add up to zilch. The stillborn comedy she’s in is so stupefyingly unfocused that it plays like a draft, not a finished work."

Writing in the Chicago Tribune, Chris Jones allows that "'Dead Accounts' holds one's attention, not least because it allows the hyperkinetic Butz to energize the piece." But none of the actors "can help the lack of credibility of some of the play's central devices."